The Origin and Early Impact of the Moore Method

1. INTRODUCTION. The Moore Method is the best known—and arguably the most successful—way to train students to become creative research mathematicians. Here the term Moore Method (as capitalized) will refer only to the method as it was used by R. L. Moore—one of the towering figures of mathematics in America [65]— and not by his students or their descendants. Figure 1 shows the octogenarian Moore in action. Mathematicians of a certain age know the main contours of the Moore Method; for others, the most complete account seems to have been written over thirty years ago by Lucille Whyburn [53]. The main elements of the method, however, can be gleaned from a quotation taken from an interview with one of Moore's little known doctoral students, G. H. Hallett, fifty years after Hallett had been in his class [47, p. 84].